Where does the time go: or why I'm still awake at 4am

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Recent Reads:

Young Adult

Cybele's Secret by Juliet Marillier - Always read the sequel first! I'm a sucker for the new book section and rarely stop to see if there's a book I should have read previously. The book does have a great cover, incidentally, Kinuko Y. Craft whom I'll be Googling. Cybele's Secret will be enjoyed by teens who've matured beyond Theodora Throckmorton, and by mothers who aren't ready for teens to be reading Libba Bray's The Sweet Far Thing. I'm always tickled by how relevant my reading choices seem to be so reading about Cybele's Gift so close to the announcement of the female fertility figure discovery was appropriate.

Paper Towns by John Green. Three for three. John Green has once again created a plot and characters that both sexes will enjoy equally. It has to be read. Similar emotional pull: the Watching Alice series by Daniel E. Parker (which also shares traits with the Gossip Girls series, which I sampled at approximately the same time).

The Dead and the Gone by Susan Beth Pfeffer. Companion to Life As We Knew It which has to be one of my top ten YA books, but not neccesarily for young adults. The moon has fallen into an orbit closer to earth and the dominos fall as geophysic events cascade. LAWKI graphically describes the aftereffects of the event in a rural/suburban landscape while TDATG occurs in an urban setting where information seems less easy to obtain. For a good freak-out high, read LAWKI first.

Adult, or mature teens

The Cobra Event by Robert Preston. Graphic in forensic anatomy and epidemiology, The Cobra Event is probably the best bioterrorism book I've ever read. As gripping as Crichton with data spot on the latest in viruses, even for a book written in 1999. There are a few passages that date the book, but then The Andromeda Strain has those as well. Once again, I finished reading just BEFORE I read the article on the emergence of a class similar to Ebola/Lassa Fever.

September 11 causes the most glaring problem: can a forensic pathologist still travel with his/her own prosector knife even if it's in checked luggage? The book also answered a question that came up in this house after a photo of the CDCs representatives were in Berks County for swine flu. Yes, they were wearing uniforms and the CDC is a branch of the Navy. If I worked at the CDC I'd be up in arms about having to wear what looked like a Girl Scout vest.

Currently Reading:

Fiction

Surving Antarctica: Reality TV 2083 by Andrea White. So far I'd catalog it in the YA section, but BCPL Bookmobile has it in Fiction. Five teens enter a contest to recreate Scott's fatal voyage to the South Pole, without knowing that the gear and materials will be appropriate to 1912, or knowing the show's producers don't play fair.